A Friendship Among Rivals

Back in the mid-1970s, I ran track for the "Eskies" of Chatham High School, in Chatham NJ. I was on a pretty good string of victories, running the 440 yard dash (one lap around the track, these days converted to the 400 meter race), and anchoring the mile relay (meaning I was the last runner), which is the same 440 yard race run by 4 runners with a baton passed from one to the other.

Somewhere along the way, as we progressed into conference, group and state meets, I made a friend from another school who was my rival in the 440 and mile relay. This was a long time ago now, and my memories must be suspect, and reshaped by decades of retelling my experience to others, but this is the story as I remember it.

His name was Donnyell Bourgeois from Whippany Park. There he is in the photo above, just behind me. I had no experience befriending strangers — I was a bit shy in that teenage kind of way — and I had almost no exposure to African Americans. But I also had nothing in my upbringing to prejudice me either. So when Donnyell was friendly, I was friendly back. We let our guard down with each other as we stood together away from the others, stretching and preparing, both of us admitting we were nervous about the meet and our races. Donnyell was easy to talk to. 

I see now that we had more in common than that which separated us. We were both runners. We were both in that place to compete and hopefully to win. We were both competing against ourselves, and our own best past records. In my memory, in certain moments, there were just the two of us, stretching, readying ourselves, moving to the starting line in slow motion, waiting, waiting, waiting for the baton to be slapped into our hands, springing into flight, hurling ourselves around the first bend, floating on the back stretch with rhythmic footfalls the only sound, hitting our mark on the end of the final turn and exploding down the home stretch in the final effort to cross the finish line first. My teammates and his teammates and the crowd and the cheers fade into the background of my recollections. It was just us two, suspended together in this altered mental state of athletic effort.

I'm sure we congratulated each other after our races. That was an important part of our connection, being gracious regardless of the outcome. Donnyell won sometimes. I won sometimes. We were very evenly matched. We made each other better, setting a pace for each other. We usually left the rest of the field behind us. In the photo above I am just about to cross the finish line in first place, winning the County track title along with my relay teammates for Chatham, with Donnyell just behind me, bringing a second place finish home for Whippany. I was lucky that day.

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Of course, in reality there were many other people involved in my experience running track, not least of whom were my relay teammates. As an underclassman, when I was the new kid, I ran with Elwood Regan, Patrick Merrell, and Keith Wilcox as well as Anthony Schiro, all of whom strode across the cinders like living, breathing giants to me. I was so happy to be on that team, even though I was the low man on the totem pole. 

By my senior year, I anchored the team along with Joe Barmakian, Jim Rice, and Brian Gilling. That's us in the photo below, referred to in an accompanying article as fleet-footed "Cloidtmen" after our tough-as-nails and (I have to admit it) beloved coach Joe Cloidt, who would position himself at the last bend during my races and as I passed would take the unlit stub of a cigar out of his mouth and shout "Burn, Gudey, burn!"

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I decided to dedicate a piece of guitar music of mine to my unlikely, meaningful, and brief friendship with Donnyell Bourgeois. This song has existed for some time, but always with a working title. Now my wordless song has a proper name: "A Friendship Among Rivals." I hope when you give it a listen it expresses some of weirdly slow-motion mental landscape of determined effort and triumphant exhilaration of our achievement together. Thanks, Donnyell, for helping make me the person I am!

If you want to hear more songs like this, check out my whole collection of Guitar Music - Volume 1.

We tore down that monument. What just changed?

Everything just changed. Something the majority of people have rejected is now taboo. Taboos scab over injuries. We are pushing extremist ideas back into the dark corners and under the rocks where they belong. We are creating necessary shame. We are expressing our ideals. 

Relax, it's OK to be intolerant of that which divides us. Of those forces in opposition to "a more perfect union." Of business models and algorithms that have been actively blinding us to the truth: that we have more in common than that which divides us. Let the angry voices of disunion, which have been shouting in our faces, now fly away and scatter in the wind.

Politicians and CEOs are the last to know. But now they know. Now they act. Governors cause monuments to be torn down. CEOs remove confederate flags from racetracks and change the names of their syrups. But the people knew first, and power, in every government, ultimately rests with the people.

Take a deep breathe. History is in the past. Life is for the living. Now we join together. We are unstoppable together. We can use our rational minds now to discover the paths through this thick forest, find a way forward and to find each other. We can use our emotions now to carry our legs forwards and power our arms to open that path wide. There is a green world waiting for us. We all want that.

___________________________

Here is the song in my heart for this moment.

#7 - Heroic Sonata

        I.  Anguish (in C-sharp minor)

        II. Awakening (in D-flat major)

 

Listen to the whole album: Piano Music, Volume 1.

Life Advice from Pops: Three Ways to be Happy

Andrew Yang, The Automation Tsunami, and Universal Basic Income as Solution

Andrew Yang, Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 2020, says there is good news and there is bad news. Which do you want first?

The bad news? OK, the bad news is that we face a devastating meltdown of our economy and society in the next 5 to 15 years due to a coming tsunami of automation. The good news is that Andrew Yang has a practical plan to weather this storm that pits Universal Basic Income (UBI) "for starters" and other innovations against this onslaught.

The starting point of this discussion is the understanding that millions of American truck drivers will be replaced by self-driving trucks in the next 5 to 10 years. This is happening! And this is only the largest single identifiable group, just a minority of all the workers who will be affected by this "great transformation" of automated technology. But wait! Remember, there is good news here. There is something we can do, says Andrew Yang.

Regarding UBI, here is an extensive transcription I made from the end of the Sam Harris Waking Up podcast, episode #130, from June 18th, in his interview with Andrew Yang (highly recommended).  

"Humanity First" - image from Yang2020.com, "What is UBI?"

“Universal Basic Income in a democracy is something that we can make happen. Most people regard it as a fantasy, as something that’s too good to be true, ignoring the fact that it was conventional political wisdom not that long ago. In 1971 it passed the House [of Representatives]. 

We are going through the greatest technological and economic shift in human history and we need to get our heads out of our asses and address it. There’s a freaking elephant in the room that’s tearing the place apart and everyone’s pretending it’s not there. 

We actually can solve these problems. We can build a better society for ourselves that involves valuing ourselves and our time in a way that’s independent of the market. We can build a new tech economy. We need new types of measurements around the economy that actually tell us how we’re doing, like median income, mental health and freedom from substance abuse, childhood success rates, proportion of elderly in quality situations, environmental quality.

We need to build this economy and we don’t have much time. 

Let’s say hypothetically, McKinsey comes out with a report saying 30% of our jobs are subject to automation by 2030, which is twelve years from now, Bain comes out with the same report, saying 20% to 25%, calling it the “great transformation” that’s going to be 4 times faster than the Industrial Revolution, which itself caused mass riots and unrest. The president of MIT comes out and says the job of MIT now is to help prepare our society for the transition. 

All of those things actually happened! All of those things are real. It’s just [that] our media is out to lunch, tracking down our idiot President’s tweet of the day. It’s insane!

All of those things actually happened! All of those things are real. It’s just [that] our media is out to lunch, tracking down our idiot President’s tweet of the day. It’s insane! 

So if you actually start looking at what’s happening in real life… I mean, the reason why Trump is our president today is because we automated away 4 million jobs in the swing states. Why isn’t that the main topic of conversation? And the Democrats are running around trying to figure out what to do about that, and I’ll tell them exactly what we are going to do about it. We’re going to impose a Freedom Dividend, and give everyone $1000 a month for starters, and then we’re going to build a new kind of economy that people can participate in, independent of their region and their skill level. That’s a generational project, it’s going to be massively challenging. But the alternative is the unthinkable. The alternative is to witness the disintegration of our society in the coming years, and we are there! We are on the cusp. This country is being torn apart by a struggle between abundance and scarcity, reason and unreason, and functioning and dysfunction, and I have to say, unreason, dysfunction, scarcity, they’re all winning.

59% of Americans cannot afford an unexpected $500 bill. They’re just stepping from week to week and paycheck to paycheck, lurching toward an uncertain future. And so expecting them to be politically functional just isn’t realistic. The way we’re going to reverse that is we’re going to secure their future. And then we can fix our political discourse, invigorate our government and state, and start solving the real problems. So that’s the challenge, that’s the revolution. That’s what I’m trying to lead.

When you think it all through, we don’t have a choice.”

- Andrew Yang, Democratic candidate for President of the United Stated, 2020, transcription by Dave Gude from the Waking Up podcast by Sam Harris, episode #130, “Universal Basic Income”, June 18, 2018. Learn more about Andrew Yang's campaign at yang2020.com.

Hasn't Hurt Me None

When I sing Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" with my band I get to sing lead. To prepare, I memorized the lyrics, which wasn't too hard, since they were already down there in sprawling basement of my memories. But still, I do an odd thing when I memorize lyrics: I actually pay attention to them, and I had never really stopped to see the irony and humor in this song's lyrics. I love this one line in particular:

"I know my lack of education hasn't hurt me none."

Ha! In praise of ignorance!

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Speaking of education and ignorance, here is something that would hurt us some if it comes to pass...

Ethan Siegel in Medium writes that the GOP tax plan will destroy graduate education and result in grad students being taxed at the highest rate in the country, even higher than billionaires.

NYT: It's the economy, smarties

1. Trumpism is anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-freedom
2. Thinking so puts one in a majority coalition of voters
3. Those of us in this coalition should be able to agree on the economy

Good advice for Democrats in 2018 by Lee Drutman in the New York Times: How Democrats Can Extend the Winning Streak Into 2018.

x

It was forty years ago today...

Gary in his studio up north and 
me drifting in ghost-like from 
my remote southern location.

My pal Gary Locke and I taught each other to play guitar 40 years ago. As soon as we learned 3 chords (E, A and C!?) we started writing songs, inspired by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

It's a long way from Truro MA to Burlington NC, and we've been apart for forty years now, but here we are starting a remote file-swapping music project, playing "together" while hundreds of miles apart after all these years.

Let's call these songs in progress. We'll see what unfolds. Gary brought in his drummer Ken Birchall to help out. Perhaps there will be other guest stars. Hmm. Who knows? As Neil Young says, life is exciting! So far, here are two instrumentals in progress. Vocals might be added, or vocals might show up in other songs. 

The first song up is Gary's instrumental acoustic fingerstyle song, which I added a harmony duet fingerstyle guitar part, plus the bass. My working title, to be confirmed, is "Glad to See Ya" since I hear those words in the main riff, and because it is the sentiment I am feeling towards my old pal after all this time. The second song is a rock rework of my "I Know What You're Thinkin'".

Enjoy the process and progress and stay tuned for more!

Thirty three years ago today

I woke up knowing it was my wedding day. I was a bundle of nerves and excitement. Six years earlier in high school around the lunch table in front of others I proposed to you. That was a long, long wait, and a lot of growing up along the way. I guess it felt like a crazy long time to you too. Driving away to Martha's Vineyard and our honeymoon that night you kept repeating, over and over, "I can't believe we're finally married!"

We grew up together back then. My favorite thing about my life is that we are still growing up together now.

I Know What You're Thinkin'

Success! I tried out our new Behringer USB audio interface with my G&L electric guitar as input device. The intention is to have a USB in to the laptop and Garageband. It works!

There are three electric guitar tracks (playing a double lead and a bass line) plus a drum loop.

This is an old song that only had the one brief line of title words as the lyrics. There is a call and response to the two main guitars. You can hear the "I know what you're thinkin'" phrasing in the "response" guitar line.

I added this to the album: "Nowheristan".

This seemed to want to be sort of jazzy lounge rock. Enjoy!

The Riddle of Old Dave, New Dave

I have finally figured out the logical fallacy of aging. Yup, finally cracked it. Boom! We have been thinking about this backwards all along. 

You see this photo? Which one is Old Dave? 

You see that dashing fellow in the yellow shirt? That's not Old Dave. No, it's that 19-year-old kid with the scruffy hair—that's Old Dave!

This guy, right here and now? I'm not old at all, I'm new. From now on, you can just call me New Dave.

Oaks in Snow

I grew up in a yellow brick house in an emerald green town all shaded in the summer by giant oak trees. In the winter those same oaks stood out stark against snow and white sky. Here is a drawing I made of that house and those oaks and that snow and white sky.

Here is my song to go with the drawing, and the Saturdays of my youth.

Oaks in Snow (in B-flat major)

UPDATE: New music video recorded June 21, 2020

 

Listen to the whole album: Piano Music, Volume 1.

My father has always loved classical music. In the yellow brick house of my childhood my dad would play classical albums on the stereo. On Saturdays the music of Beethoven filled that house, yearning and triumphant.

Hopefully, I've captured a small piece of the yearning and the triumph. Thanks, Dad! Thanks, Beethoven! 

The Accompanist

We used to walk around the corner with the kids to visit Bev's parents. At these family gatherings the kids had great times with their grandparents and visiting uncles, aunts and cousins as well. It was the 1980s and I was a fan of George Winston's new age piano instrumentals. So I made up a song in that style on my father-in-law Bryan's piano. For all these years it has had no name. It's just my piano song in F major. I would play it every time we visited. I probably wore people out with repeated playing (sorry All!) but I think Bryan liked it. 

Now Bryan is gone, his life cut way too short by cancer. But the piano remains, a part of him left behind, right here in my own house for me to play whenever I want. 

The other day I asked Bev to take some photos of me playing the piano. So she got her camera and I started playing. I played my nameless song in F. I stopped and turned to see Bev looking shaken and emotional. A few moments earlier, with the afternoon sun streaming in through the west windows, Bev had a vivid sense of her father Bryan standing in the room, listening and watching, drawn to the sound of his old piano and to my playing.

And there's something more. The photos Bev took show my hands reflected in the glossy black finish of the raised keyboard cover. As I look at these photos, I wonder whose hands those are in the reflection? It is as if someone else's hands play a dimly reflected piano, accompanying my own. 

And now my song has a name.


The Accompanist (in F major)

UPDATE: New music video recorded June 21, 2020


Listen to the whole album: Piano Music - Volume 1.

The if-handed monster

Not left-handed, not right-handed. I'm the other one.

If I'm doing this particular activity then I'm a lefty, if I'm doing that particular activity then I'm a righty. So this must make me… if-handed? 

I'm not talking ambidextrous. Mostly it's one or the other rather than either.

But wait, there's more! My if-handedness is paired.

But even an oddity like me can be explained.  

First, I am mostly a lefty. Like all southpaws, I have grappled with right-handed scissors (my left hand lost that battle), right-side dials on wristwatches, right-sided mice and number pads on computers, and on and on. It is a cruel world.

Second, playing musical instruments is part of my story. I had ample opportunity and motivation to develop my "weaker" right hand as I learned to play piano and guitar.

Finally, it seems logical that once I was on this path it was natural to continue down it. Gradually, slowly, I became the if-handed monster that I am today.

Look away, I'm hideous!

One thing makes all the difference

I turned to take the photo of the throng of moms, dads and kids decorating themselves and their bicycles for a family Fourth of July parade and something struck me. 

There was one that made all the difference. Can you spot it? 

It's in the background but it covers the whole scene. It draws together all the parents and children and balloons and bikes and costumes. Click on the photo to study it really closely. Do you see it now?

Click or tap to look closer.

It is that giant old shade tree.

What's age got to do with it?

Nothing, that's what.

OK, sure, time goes by. Aging happens. But so what?

People say: "I must be getting old because I...can't remember, feel tired, weary, worn out, vision blurry, need a nap, can't stop yawning, rubbing eyes, dozing off, tossing, turning, restless night, can't focus, joints won't bend, muscles stiff, head is aching, sneezy, breathless, mopey, bored."

Not one of those things has to mean you're getting old. I felt all those things at 19. I feel better now.

My great nephew Braxton gets a backstage pass to see Graymatter at the Pittsboro Roadhouse. Click or tap to enlarge my happy feet (but you won't slow them down). 

My Favorite Year in Music: 1971

What's your favorite year in music, and how old were you at the time? For me it was 1971, the year I turned 14 and entered high school. I recently converted a number of my favorite vinyl albums to digital format and found myself returning over and over to albums released in this one year.

Click or tap to enlarge

My Nine Favorite Albums from 1971
I wore these albums completely out.
1. Led Zeppelin IV, aka ZOFO
2. Crosby Stills Nash and Young, 4 Way Street
3. Carole King, Tapestry
4. George Harrison and Friends, Concert for Bangladesh
5. Paul McCartney, Ram
6. Beach Boys, Surf's Up
7. Joni Mitchell, Blue
8. Cat Stevens, Teaser and the Fire Cat
9. Van Morrison, Tupelo Honey

But wait, there's more! 
Here are nine personal runners-up from this astonishing year.
• John Lennon, Imagine
• Graham Nash, Songs for Beginners
• T Rex, Electric Warrior
• Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story
• Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers
• The Who, Who's Next
• Yes, Fragile
• Jethro Tull, Aqualung
• Don McLean, American Pie


Hey hey mama
Led Zeppelin IV shot right through me like a lightning bolt. "Hey hey mama, gonna make you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove" and "Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time". What teenage boy doesn't reverberate to that? Clinching the deal, "Battle of Evermore" was riddled with Lord of the Rings references—my favorite book of the time.

When the dream came
Crosby Stills Nash and Young's live double album 4 Way Street in 1971 has a photo on the cover that made acoustic guitar playing look irresistible to me. I wanted to BE one of those guys. "When the dream came, I held my breath with my eyes closed" sang Neil Young, and that's when my dream came along too.

Daylight always comes at the right time
George Harrison made some phone calls that brought together Ravi Shankar, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan for his Concert for Bangladesh. George stepped out of the shadow of Lennon and McCartney in his shining white suit and emerged as a charismatic bandleader. Like 4 Way Street, the Concert for Bangladesh was sparked by social consciousness, and both albums have a special sense of purpose. Both albums also led me to so much additional music of the various singer/songwriters involved.

Imagine all the monkberry moon delight
John Lennon released his most popular song, Imagine, and album of the same name, in 1971. But I remain just as big a fan of the lesser known 1971 album by Paul McCartney, Ram. It has a wonderful set of songs and ripping lead guitar work by Paul and plenty of Beatlesque touches.

A year of contrasts
Yes created classic progressive rock (and The Who joined that trend by weaving hypnotic synths into their guitar rock), but Van Morrison got back to the country. Cat Stevens strummed folk rock and Carole King got jazzy with her acoustic piano pop gems. CSNY played "wooden music" and rocked out as well, as did Led Zeppelin (although we should put the emphasis the other way around for them).

Look out world, I've arrived!
That's what I remember thinking when I was 13, turning 14 during that fateful year of 1971. The story of my post-child grown-up life began that year, and holey moley, what a soundtrack I had!